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It’s no secret around these parts that I’m a Super Powers collector. I have a complete loose collection and a (near) complete carded collection. But, I can’t just stop with the 33 figures in the line. For the past 3 years I have been buying Super Powers customs. Mostly loose, but I LOVE to find custom SP figures on custom SP cards.

Several months ago a series of …figures started to show up on Ebay by multiple sellers. They were being billed by the sellers as "the lost wave" of Super Powers figures and were "discovered overseas." They said they were manufactured by a company called "Industrial Toy Werks" out of Kazakhstan (which as you recall is where the character Borat is from).

Collectors took notice of these and threads started popping up on several message boards, including ours, asking about the origin of these figures. This has been fairly baffling as the different sellers all have a different story about where they came from and how they came to own them, that and the fact that there are a LOT of them. There are some characters I’ve seen listed (and usually sell) as many as 20 times.

So what are these? Are they customs? Are they bootlegs? Were they manufactured in mass? How many were made, who did it and why? I still don’t have all of those answers but after having one in my collection I can make some educated guesses.

I knew that most of the figures would not look great close up, but the cards seem to look nice. The main issue was that they were a bit too pricey for what they were. Most ranged from $50-$100 with their starting bids and their "Buy It Nows." There were a few loose ones that showed up that were just a figure and a card with no bubble,but those didn’t really fit into what I collected.

Then, a Mirror Master showed up on Ebay a few weeks back for a decent price because the bubble was separating from the card, so I went for it, I took one for the team, wanted some answers, I bit on it and I won the auction. There was a little bit of back and forth with the seller after the auction closed. They wanted to make sure I knew that the bubble was really separating and that it might even be worse than the auction described… so they offered to throw in some freebies. My carded Mirror Master arrived with a Batman McDonald’s toy, and old Superman comic from the 90′s and a loose Super Powers Kalibak (no weapon but great paint and tight joints, even better than the loose sample in my collection, so I swapped him out.)

Here is the carded carded Mirror Master I received:

He was quite easy to slip out of the bubble:

Let’s look at the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of this figure.

The good is the card. Man, the card work is amazing! It looks just like the real thing that might have been manufactured by Kenner in the 80′s. It’s got the gloss front, the matte back, the bubble. This is probably the nicest must professional custom card I have seen for any line. My Mirror Master came with the figure in a backer tray that clearly belonged to a different figure, and most Super Powers figures didn’t have backer trays in their bubbles. Other that that little detail and the minor changes to logos and wording this is a pretty spot-on custom job as far as the layout and printing of the card.

It has a die-cut hanger tab (unpunched), the real deal, it’s not just drawn on.

It mentions the magnetic parts here in the card text and that you can mix and match parts. That is not true. More on that and the construction of the figure below.

It has a biography card on the back in the same font and format as the real cards:

Here is the list of characters shown on the back supposedly made for this line/wave:

Of the figures shown above I have yet to see a listing or image for Blue Beetle, Gleek, Booster Gold, Apache Chief, Wendy, Marvin or Wonder Dog. All of the others have been sold several times with the rarest seeming to be Jayna of the Wonder Twins. You can see carded images of them later in this article.

Another thing to note is that none of the Shazams or Supergirls that have shown up and sold have capes attached to the figure or included with them.

Shazam is an interesting inclusion in this series since he was in the actual Super Powers 3rd wave line up, but I suppose that Black Adam was made from the same parts so it was an easy repaint/inclusion in the line.

Of course the strangest inclusion in the line is Bruce Lee as "The Dragon."

The other items mentioned on the card back are the two "play environments." Neither of these have ever surfaced on Ebay either.

The final note of interest on the cards is the inclusion of this wording:

On the standard figure this text reads: Contents: One toy figure ("one mini comic book" is also included on wave 1 and 2 figures).

Also at the top of the regular cards the text reads: AGES 4 AND UP

Where as on these the text reads: AGES 18 AND UP; THIS IS NOT A TOY

This clearly puts these into the category of Customs and Bootlegs and not a legitimate "lost wave" as some of the sellers would have buyers believe. We know what the REAL lost 4th wave would have been.

The Bad…here is Mirror Master loose. As you can see he is based off of the Flash body, with Shazam’s arms and Doctor Fate’s legs. He still has the lightning bolt belt that’s just been painted over. The head sculpt looks to be all new probably an original sculpt judging by it’s large size and one solid piece with no neck articulation.

The figure cast in solid resin so he has more weight to him than a standard SP figure. He doesn’t have any action feature and there’s NO magnetic parts as mentioned on the card.

The UGLY…WHOAH! Now that’s a face only a mother could love! As you can see in this closeup the paint is not the strong point. The eyes are just vague, crooked black dots, and the lips are just a smudge.

It also looks like there was a sculpting glitch on his "bib" where whatever they used to sculpt it flipped up a bit when they let it dry and it stayed that way.

On the card art of the character there’s some sort of device on his wrist. This is simply painted onto his arm as is his holster that hang off his belt. The actual costume design has two holsters one on each leg. This bootleg only has one.

Because of the limitations of the material used the legs are REALLY loose, floppy even. It is possible to get him to stand when finding his center of gravity, but make sure nothing bumps the shelf he’s standing on.

In this picture below you can clearly see how wide a gap there is between the hip and the pelvis.

Another interesting thing to note is that there are no peg holes in the feet like all Kenner figures of this time had.

In my Custom Super Powers buying frenzy of the past year I actually ended up with two different Mirror Masters customs by two different custom artists. This one is also based on the Flash body:

As you can see the custom on the left is much more accurate in color, costume and accessories. That was part of my inspiration in buying this was since the bubble was separated from the card, I knew I could do this switchero and have a much cooler carded Mirror Master in my Super Powers collection.

Here are some of the other figures available from this series:

I still don’t know who made these or how many are out there, but hopefully after reading this you can answer for yourself "are they worth it?’

I wouldn’t mind picking up Captain Atom, Black Adam, Classic Brainiac and maybe Supergirl for my collection IF I found them cheep enough. With the cards as nice as they are there’s enough of a novelty factor in them for me to be interested. And, I can always try to do another switchero with a better custom.

This was a fantastic read, Daniel. Thanks a lot for “taking one for the team” and actually purchasing this turd. I’m glad you had a better custom to put in it, tho…that thing sucks worse than the Gulliver figures!

Wow – that was a great read. Like many here, I was very intrigued when I first saw these pop up on ebay. Thanks for the very in-depth article and the write up. The customs really are pretty bad, but like you said probably well worth it for the cards if you can find them cheap enough.

It’d be interesting to do a follow up to see who is actually making them.

The biggest giveaway that these are not a “lost wave” of SP figures is that the card art is not from the Garcia-Lopez style guides at the time. Many of these look to be from animated cells, like Mirror Master and Black Manta, while Black Adam is Tom Mandrake from the Shazam! a New Beginning Mini Series. They are pretty nice looking cards, though.

I can see why the wave was lost:) The question becomes, why was it found? The cards are fanstastic! The art though is a couple notches down from the general Super Powers artwork I think. The figures are a little shoddy, but for bootleg they’re good… For custom though, I’d expect more.
I love the Super Powers line. I replace some of my JLU’s from their display with Super Powers (Martian Manhunter, Dr. Fate, Aquaman) I’d love to see a commemorative line of these, and with additional releases too.
It is awesome that you bought it though, I would have too. I got a great classic Airwave custom that I threw in with my collection.
Awesome article! SUPER POWERS FOREVER!

Glad you took the plunge too. I actually did see the Blue Beetle for sale once, and was always curious about these. Based on my own manufacturing and customizing experience here’s what I figure:
The cards are probably press-run, with the die punch,aqueous coating, and similar vacuum-formed bubbles. To make a run of these they would had to have run a lot of them off to justify the cost. The figures themselves seem to be “home-cast” resin jobs reusing the same mold over and over for multiple characters (with the construction apparently lacking). I’m guessing most of the other characters on the back were never made but added on the back for filler, as with the “playsets” which are nothing more than screen shots. As for the Kazahkstan bit, and supposed “registered trademark” I’m guessing it’s all fake to protect the original creator from copyright infringement, as producing more than one of these for sale would be enough to raise DC’s eyebrow. The cost they’re asking is not surprising considering, the inherent costs involved for short runs like this. Probably also why the quality of the actual figure is so poor. Just my thoughts on it.

This big honkin’ comics geek can give you some added info as to why Mirror Master is a fake. The bio card has all the evidence you need.

At the time of the Super Powers line (1984-1986), the Mirror Master of the comics was one Samuel Scudder, and he was almost exclusively a Flash villain. He died in the ‘Crisis On Infinite Earths’ crossover.

In 1988, Mirror Master II–Evan McCulloch–appeared in the pages of the newly-launched Animal Man series. And Animal Man himself hadn’t appeared more than once or twice since the late ’60s.

So, during the original toy run, there never was a Mirror Master named McCulloch that fought Animal Man. And that’s one to grow on!

Hey, does anyone know what happened to SP/SW customizer Rick Gerischer aka Ebay’s RAGinc? He was from SW MO if I recall correctly. Joplin?

He had the little strips/cartoons like ToyFare’s TTT using his customs. I used to look forward to his stuff just for that, but then someone pissed him off on one of the boards and he apparently closed up shop shortly after. I bought the “book” of his cartoons, that’s the only way I know his name.

Booster Gold didn’t debut until the end of 1985 (February 1986 is the cover date for his first appearance in Booster Gold #1. There is no way they would have gotten him in acton figure form at that point.

That’s another clue that this line is a modern fake. Well done, but fake.

Awesome. I’m glad you found the blog then. I think I have a couple of your customs in my SuperPowers collection.
I did such a custom buying frenzy there for a while that I forgot who made some of them.

I bought a few of these figures and I was surprised with them when they arrived. Whoever made them is walking on a fine line as an artist. Are they a custom project or is it a “bootleg”? Its very interesting and I have never seen anything else like it. I have seen straight up bootlegs from asia/mexico but they are typically low quality copies of existing figures with no effort to add bios or artwork…and I have seen some of the best “customs” fans have produced. The Mirror Master owned by Mr. Marx is an example of the high end of artistic quality within a figure. I think something one needs to consider is the total package in the case of Industrial Toy Werks. For example, rather than considering the card, bubble, and figure as separate elements, one must consider the overall display quality of the carded figure. Whoever is doing these has raised the bar for all customers OR bootleggers out there. From what I see, some of the supply has dried up and its difficult to find some of the characters now. I am wondering a lot about where the future will go with these characters. I have to imagine there are only so many of each character in existence and putting together a full Industrial Toy Werks collection might be a difficult task and these make their way out there. I think my favorite aspect of these toys is that as customs, you rarely have a sense of a “series”. Many custom projects start with high hopes only to fizzle out with a single figure made and sold on ebay. These Toy Werks guys are doing something very interesting that I have never seen before. Its like something that can be held into a few collectors collections and will have a name associated with it.

I’ve got a 3 year old and he’s watching the old Superfriends cartoon that began in 1973, downloaded from Amazon.com. And now he wants Marvin, Wendy, and Wonderdog to play with. It’s easy to find Superman, Batman, etc, but is there anywhere to get these old ones? Or is there anywhere that will make them for me?

I saw the BlackAdam on Ebay. Would look okay except for the. You’re right the card is awesome but totallt fake. The ITW symbol is bitten off of the DC Elseworlds story Superman:Red Son, where Supermans rocket lands in Russia rather then Kansas and so he is raised as a Russkie. I think Black Adam Could work with maybe a Toybiz Punisher head with little other adjustments made………

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About Me:

Julius Marx was know the world over for 10 years as the title character in the long running TV cop-on-the-edge show “Hockuly!” Now he writes about and takes pictures of toys and attempts to put all his weird knowledge to work for him. He has been collecting toys his entire life.